Z NATION Starts Tonight On SyFy And Space

Three years after a zombie outbreak, Lt. Mark Hammond is escorting Murphy from New York to a lab in California. They come across a commune run by former reservist Charles Garnett. Hammond recruits Garnett to take him to the next checkpoint where transportation is waiting to take them the rest of the way. 

Z Nation carries all the cheekiness of an Asylum production. There is some self awareness going on here. The show is not playing face cards here; but it is not low brow either. It knows that viewers are going to want a lot of red and that is what they are going to get. There is no explanation of how to kill a zombie here. No one has to explain anything. We know zombies are bad and they must be killed. We know how they must be killed. So everyone on the show has had three years of practice for our sake and can get right down to business and that is the business of killing zombies. Just now, they have taken this mission of escorting Murphy to California. Could be nice over there this time of year. 

There is loads of zombie violence. Lots of blows to the head. The zombies are aggressive but single minded. In a scene where the survivors come across Cassandra at the checkpoint she has locked herself in a steel cage and there are zombies on all four corners. These three other survivors just walk up and start cracking skulls and none of the other zombies stop for a moment to consider the rapid and sudden decline in their numbers. Maybe because Cassandra was dressed like she was on her way to a Lara Croft cosplay competition when the zombies came after her. She was just more desirable, a feast for the eyes. I get that way when I see a woman in shorts and a tank top. You can kill everyone else around me and I'll still be looking at her. I supposed I can relate. 

Tom Everett Scott and DJ Qualls are probably the most recognizable actors for people over thirty. For the youngins Michael Welch from the Twilight Trilogy is part of the group. His character name also happens to be Mack so I guess that means I have to like him. or something. Maybe not wish him dead, at least for a little while. 

Sure, there are questions raised about the amount of time between the breakout and where the story begins. Three years is a long time to be escorting the only known survivor of a zombie attack to somewhere safe to create a vaccine. Its not quite 40 years wandering around in the desert (a little Sunday School humor for you there) but it seems like a really long time to wander around when there is apparently a clear goal in mind. America is big but it does not take you three years to walk across it. Does it? 

There are a lot of silly things to nit pick about. The survivors find a baby at the next checkpoint. Who has babies during a zombie epidemic? It's been a couple years honey. We've survived this long. Let's make a baby. DJ Qualls is Citizen Z, a military man child stranded at an base in some frozen tundra. Do military outposts really stockpile enough supplies, food and fuel for three years? Yeah. It is just one guy and he is a bean pole, but c'mon! 

When you get down to the nitty gritty of it you, the viewer, want to know if Z Nation is going to be worth your time. Does it have good zombie violence? Yes. It there a lot of it? At least in the premiere episode, there is. Do folks ramble on a lot about things other zombies? Again. Not in the premiere episode but someone may try to sneak some character development at us in later episodes. Mack, will you watch more episodes when they come out? Yeah. I'll give it a couple more episodes at least. 

SyFy and The Asylum present the 13 episode zombie series which premieres tonight, Friday, September 12th at 10pm ET on SyFy in the States and on Space up here in Canada.